Should athletes pay their way?

David Sygall

THE man whose report led to the establishment of the Australian Institute of Sport believes athletes should pay back the cost of their development if they make money through sport.

Professor John Bloomfield believes a HECS-style system of repayment once an athlete's earnings passed a set amount would encourage increased government investment.

''I would totally agree with [a repayment program] - and a lot of people involved in sport have said to me 'shut up, Bloomfield. We don't want that','' he said.

''They wouldn't pay it back until they earned enough money. So, if you don't make anything, you don't pay anything back. But you've got to remember these are public funds. There are some tennis players, for instance, who went through sports high schools, state academies, the Australian Institute of Sport - all publicly funded - and are now earning a lot of money. They should be paying something back.''

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The way sport is funded in Australia has become a polarising issue during the London Olympics. The 2009 Crawford Report recommended investment be more proportionate to participation levels (the most popular sports in Australia are typically non-Olympic sports) and focused on grassroots, but Australian Olympic Committee president John Coates, among others, has called for continued high investment in Olympic programs, arguing that money is necessary for international success, which spurs grassroots participation.

The federal government is investing a record $1.2 billion in sport over four years from 2010-11, of which $170 million a year goes to high-performance sport.

Meanwhile, the Crawford Report said that, while the consumer price index rose in Australia by 36.6 per cent between 1998-99 and 2008-09, the cost of sports participation, including club subscriptions and registration fees, had increased by nearly double that percentage in the same period.

Bloomfield said repaying publicly funded development of elite athletes had been discussed for years, but had not been implemented because it would be ''quite unpopular''.

''But I think it should be done,'' he said. ''Sportspeople who earn a lot of money should pay some back, like the HECS system for students. I think the government would end up putting in more money if they knew they were going to get some of it back.''

However, the Australian Sports Commission said independent advice had found such a scheme would be ''unlikely to provide worthwhile financial returns to the government because the vast majority of athletes do not earn high incomes from their sporting careers and there would be significant costs in administering the system''.

''We must remember that the vast majority of our Olympic athletes are amateur,'' a commission spokesman said. ''A significant number of our athletes are also studying whilst competing and incur a normal HECS debt as part of this process.

''Further, it's an inaccurate comparison, as the HECS scheme is based on the principle that the student is gaining educational skills to provide them with the opportunity to earn an income from those skills for the rest of their lives. Through elite sports funding, we are developing athletes' ability to compete internationally - they are not studying to develop employable skills.''

The debate over levels and uses of funding may be partly linked to changing sentiment about what constitutes success. Bloomfield said his white paper for the Whitlam government in 1973 recommended a national institute be established to facilitate a healthier population and improve elite-level performances. The idea was dropped by the Fraser government but implemented after the 1976 Montreal Games. The AIS opened in 1981 and, in time, was tagged ''the gold medal factory''.

Many victories at the Sydney and Athens Games might have created a lopsided focus on elite performance, Bloomfield said.

''We need to hook up sport more to public health,'' he said. ''Sport is a preventative health policy. It's not just about winning gold medals.''

The director of the AIS, Matthew Favier, agreed, but said policy must be ''tailored to the specific challenges within each of those domains''.

''Successful high-performance sport must be underpinned by participation,'' Favier said from London. ''The first principle is that you want a strong, healthy population involved in sporting pursuit. This is a complex problem and there's no straightforward answer.'' What was definitive, he said, was it was a privilege, not a right, to have public investment in high-performance sport and that ''we're clear about what that investment is used for''.

That is certain to come under scrutiny as the dust settles from London. Favier believes there is still a strong desire from the public to invest in the pursuit of elite success.

''People continue to believe that it means a lot to us as a nation,'' he said. ''Australians are highly respected as competitors, people who give their all, work very hard and can't be underestimated in a fight.

''I think it's a characteristic that defines who we are. We should take nothing but a sense of pride from that. Those qualities are, I still believe, important qualities for Australians to aspire to.''